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CEO of Topishare Hila Peled

Hila Peled: Why I Invested Time and Money in Building a New Social Network

August 30, 20161,362 Views

We all hear it a million times, there’s a new start-up and they’re going to change the world. The show Silicon Valley jokes about in almost every episode, and this recent blog on medium talks about how making it easier for someone to order pizza from home might perhaps be a nice idea, but isn’t in fact ‘changing the world’.

For the past two years I have been working non-stop (and I mean, literally, non-stop) to build and shape a start-up company that I know will change the world, that is (cliché, cliché) ‘revolutionizing’, and that is tackling an actual problem.

Topishare has many several different sides, but what it basically does is that it gives anyone the possibility to create their very own social network without knowing any coding.

One side of it, the one that is very close to my heart, are actually the implications topishare has for businesses and media. With it, I am fulfilling a long awaited dream of mine: to give tools to businesses and organizations that will grow their business, for free.

From when I was only eight years old, I went every Thursday with my father to his business meetings. Every Thursday. It’s where I was first exposed to the business world, and I still keep those memories in a special place in my heart. It’s where my journey in the business world started, and it has guided me when I was older for 15 years as employee (VP marketing of a major company), and 15 years after that as entrepreneur.

And this is why the tools topishare offers business are so important to me.

During the years I’ve witnessed a major shift in business relationships. Basically, businesses put time and effort in creating personal relations with their customers, and the customers were treated with respect: “the customer is always right”. The customer, on the other hand, could get direct personal access to the business owners.

It’s when I was VP marketing that I realized the importance of a personal relationship when I got stuck with a wrong order of apple sauce. Our storage manager had ordered much more than we were distributing. So I decided to visit one of our customers, an elderly home which usually took a lot of apple sauce, and asked the manager for a favor. And he laughed. And he took the full order. I am not sure this would have happened if we hadn’t built such a good relationship before that.

But technology and social media have changed this. It’s supposed to be easier to connect with your customer, but as a result it has actually lost the personal connection it used to have. For example, Facebook pages, which don’t let media and businesses connect with their customer and customers connect with them, because of algorithms set in place by Facebook to force big pay for little engagement.

And that’s just plain wrong if you ask me.

It’s wrong because we are all losing out, both the businesses and the customers. And that’s what my company is tackling. Through topishare businesses can create their own social network which they can embed directly to their site.

It’s a place where customers can directly communicate with the company, and where the company has direct access to its customers, without worrying they can’t reach them because of algorithms and other hurdles on the road. And the best thing: you are in control of creating it, what tools you need, and in shaping the perfect social network tailored to your specific needs.

You can increase engagement with at least 20%, increase time spend on your site by 60%, and it’s a free service! Really, what do you have to lose?

After two years of hard work we’ve launched the beta version, and we are currently testing and upgrading the platform, so it can actually fill all the needs you have.

We’re operating from Tbilisi, Georgia, and are currently translating our platform to Russian.